CTEL is currently accepting proposals for the following grant programs:

Technology Enhanced Learning (TEL) Grants: Funding is available for purchase of hardware, software, and other resources to support teaching and learning. Faculty teaching classes in face-to-face, blended, and online formats are encouraged to apply.

Conference Travel Awards: Up to four awards per semester (Fall and Spring) for faculty traveling to academic conferences to present papers related to teaching and learning.

Dr. Rob Sanford and Dr. Joe Staples from the Department of Environmental Science are collaborating with Dr. Liz Vella from the Department of Psychology to offer a unique Entry Year Experience (EYE) course. CTEL Learning Designer Dr. Rucha Modak is providing design and technology support. Students participate in this self-paced course by completing at least 10 days canoeing along the Northern Forest Canoe Trail (NFCT), which extends from Old Forge, New York to Fort Kent, Maine. During this period, they complete a set number of assignments - most at a time and place of their choosing - and submit their reports in the form of documents, videos and images to the three instructors. Included in these assignments is contribution of data, management plan, activities, etc. to the NFCT organization.

The Sloan Consortium (now the Online Learning Consortium or OLC) is a not-for-profit professional organization dedicated to quality online learning. It offers free webinars to those with an institutional membership. Given USM’s membership in the OLC, faculty and staff members can take advantage of this wonderful resource for professional development. Several of the upcoming webinars are designed to help those faculty who are teaching online for the first time, while others deal with advanced topics such as multi-user blogging in online classes and virtual internships. Past webinars are also available as recordings. Before participating or watching a recording, please ensure that your Java version is up to date: http://sloanconsortium.org/institute/workshops/technical-requirements

Please mark these dates on your calendars, as you will have no access to Blackboard during this upgrade. If you try to access the Blackboard site, you’ll be redirected to a static page announcing that maintenance is underway.

You can preview these new features in the upgrade test environment by directing your browser to the url, https://ut.courses.maine.edu/. The course content and enrollments are a copy of what was in the production environment as of April 13, 2014. Please do not do any work that you would like to save as this environment will be deleted once the upgrade has completed.

Blackboard course shells for Fall 14 are now available to build. Instructors who want to to add content (including syllabus, reading and viewing materials assignments and grade center settings) to Blackboard can now do so. Students don’t have access to these until the course is made available through Customization (under the Control Panel). Please click on Properties and set availability to ‘Yes’ when you are ready. Student names will show up in the course in less than 24 hours.

Learning Commons in partnership with CTEL offers the Tech Tutors program. Tech Tutors is a team of USM students who have been selected and trained by the Learning Commons to support USM students with a set of learning technologies that are used in USM courses. This set includes: Microsoft Office Suite, Google Office, Adobe Connect, VoiceThread, Grammarly, Screencast-o-matic and MiniTab. Please note, Tech Tutors do not provide Blackboard related support. USM’s Helpdesk should be contacted for Blackboard related questions.

Please share information about the Tech Tutors program with your students and encourage them to make use of this resource. There are three ways to access support from a Tech Tutor:

Located in the Learning Commons on the 2nd floor of Glickman Library, "The Vault" serves as a small media production studio for faculty. It is called "The Vault" because the room originally served as the bank vault for the bakery that was located in the present day Glickman building.

The room has excellent acoustics and contains a computer workstation equipped basic media production tools and software for faculty to record and edit digital projects- including screencasts, whiteboard video lectures, podcasts, or Khan-Academy style instructional videos.

The Vault is now designated exclusively for faculty use. Students can access recording equipment through Instructional Technology & Media Services. CTEL has assumed the responsibility for scheduling and supporting faculty who wish to use the vault. Faculty who wish to schedule an appointment can contact Pieter Tryzelaar (ptryzelaar@usm.maine.edu) or Rucha Modak (rmodak@usm.maine.edu).